Black Pus is the even noisier and more intense solo project of Lightning Bolt drummer and visual artist Brian Chippendale. The project started out as a home-recording experiment while Lightning Bolt was already in a full-swing mode of activity in the mid-2000s, but allowed an outlet for Chippendale's surplus of uncontainable and unruly sounds. Black Pus operates intermittently, with early lo-fi recordings giving way to full-length albums like 2024's Thrill Jockey-released Terrestrial Seethings. Black Pus began in 2005 with Chippendale recording at home and layering his frenetic drum style with multi-tracks of free jazz saxophone. The end result of these recordings was a series of Black Pus CD-R releases beginning in early 2006. While still dedicating a good deal of his time to touring and recording with Lightning Bolt, Chippendale began working more on the Black Pus project, eventually playing live shows and issuing several smaller-scale releases. By 2011, Chippendale had refined his approach to playing solo and dropped the jazz-based instrumentation, opting instead to complement his bombastic drumming and garbled vocal style with drum-mounted electronics that produced dark and noisy frequencies. The first proper full-length, Primordial Pus, employed this new sound and was released in 2011 on Providence, Rhode Island label Load Records. Chippendale followed in 2013 with All My Relations, the most well-produced document of his often caustic sounds to date, released this time on Thrill Jockey Records. The following year, Black Pus released a split LP with Chicago thrash/noise metal band Oozing Wound, as well as an LP reissue of a 2012 limited tour-only release Pus Mortem. As the 2020s dawned, more sounds from the Black Pus archives were reissued in wider-scale formats, and Chippendale also collaborated with Ty Segall under the Wasted Shirt moniker. In 2024, a new set of Black Pus material emerged in the form of the full-length Terrestrial Seethings. The album, released once more with Thrill Jockey, returned to Chippendale's early approach to the project, mixing ragged improvisation with layered overdubs, heavy on bassy keyboard lines, blasting drums, and hypnotic repetition. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi